


i see the girls are out, a lot of freaks in the house

by gonnafeelgood



Category: Bandom RPF, Mindless Self Indulgence, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - College, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-03
Updated: 2008-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 16:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonnafeelgood/pseuds/gonnafeelgood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>So Lyn-z would never say that all of this was destined to be, not her life here, or Gerard, not even all of these insane people who are her friends. But she can kind of understand for the first time why people might say shit like that.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

*  
Lyn-z loves everything about college. Before she moved out west, she'd always kind of felt like an alien. An alien trapped in New Jersey.

It's maybe a little strange that she finds her place in a Jesuit school in bumfuck Washington.

But she does. She finds a place, a name, a whole person. A life.

*

In hindsight, she's not even sure why she applied to Gonzaga – she vaguely remembers something about Mrs. Montano putting applications for schools in front of her with a gleam in her eye. Steve was supportive, as always, and loved that Lindsey was making his mom so damn happy by filling out a couple of applications to Catholic schools. And really, she was applying everywhere that would waive the application fee because of economic status or something and Gonzaga waived the application fee because Mrs. Montano's older brother was an alumni.

Whatever. It didn't really matter. Lindsey figured that she and Steve would both end up in New York or L.A. or something, someplace with a good liberal arts school for her and a good art school for Steve. She never had a firm plan, and she definitely wasn't stupid enough to have started planning their apartment together (a fourth-floor walkup in Brooklyn because their parents would never let them live together in their homes, just barely big enough, that would slowly fill with her family's castoffs and his charcoals on the wall) or thinking about the day Steve would come home with a contract for his first comic.

She's not stupid. It's just that she'd kind of figured that they'd end up in the same place or close enough to the same place that they'd still be able to be together.

So when Steve got into the School of Visual Arts, which was by far the best school he'd applied to, Lindsey had a certain feeling of assurance when she opened her NYU letter.

And her CUNY letter. And Barnard. And Columbia.

Okay, so she'd known that she could have tried a little harder in high school, right? And, in hindsight, she can see that a 2.8 GPA and a transcript almost entirely lacking extracurricular activities maybe weren't the strongest application ever. But she had extracurriculars! She was extra-ing all over the place, but it wasn't anything that fit on a transcript, nothing that wasn't the garage band that she'd started with her neighbor Jimmy, the mixed media paintings in her basement that even her art teacher didn't know about, and hanging out with Steve.

It's not like anyone had even told her how to apply to college. Nobody in her family had ever been to college. The guidance counselors at her school were a fucking joke – if they'd known anything about career planning, would they really be guidance counselors?

Maybe she'd been a little embarrassed to ask, yeah. Mrs. Montano obviously knew stuff about college applications, but … Lindsey didn't like reminding anyone that her family wasn't perfect. Because they were perfect, for her. They just weren't perfect for college applications.

Still, when Lindsey opened the last rejection letter from her East Coast schools, she was more than a little shocked. But by the end of the days of having her heart in her throat while she opened another letter from another fucking school, she had choices. She'd gotten into Gonzaga University, the University of Colorado, and University of California Riverside.

It doesn't really matter. They're all really far from New York. Lindsey is pretty sure that she doesn't like the desert and crazy high altitudes, so she looks up the Gonzaga website.

Spokane, Washington. It's not a desert. It's not a mountaintop. It's ridiculously far from everything that Lindsey knows.

So. Gonzaga.

*

"Babe, we'll stick together," Steve promised, his eyes wide and his face sincere.

Lindsey was in love, not stupid.

"No," she said. "We won't."

*

Lindsey comes to Gonzaga with some expectations. She finally has a Plan, see. She's going to major in art and psychology. She chooses art because she loves it and psychology because she can't ask her mom to help her pay for even a part of school if she's not going to major in something that's plausibly the basis of a career. This is why art school wasn't an option, not for her. She isn't Steve with his supportive parents and middle-class family.

She's going to live in the dorms for the first two mandatory years, and then hopefully she'll have some really cool friends to move in with. She's going to do a semester abroad if she can figure out how to swing it financially and she is not going to get into a relationship that keeps her anywhere.

Later, Lindsey will think that it was cute that she thought she had any control over any of it.

But on the first day, Lindsey has smaller, more limited expectations. Lindsey's seen movies. She figures that her first day in the dorms will be a little crazy and kind of cool. She expects to be invited to a party.

It is crazy. It's not (for the most part) cool. She is, however, invited to parties. While she's outside smoking and taking a break from setting up her room with her very perky new roommate ("Julie!"), Lindsey is invited to six house parties.

"Bad idea," a girl warns, taking a pull on her cigarette. They're standing outside of the freshman dorms in the part of the grass that seems to be unofficially designated for smokers.

"What? Why?" Lindsey asks.

"Seniors," the other girl says, her thin face settling into a scowl. She is wearing a tank top and a short skirt with clunky boots and looks, in short, much cooler than Julie or most of the girls on Lindsey's floor. "My cousin went to school here. It's a thing, I guess, for creepy seniors to try to get freshman girls to go to their parties the first weekend. We're supposed to be easy drunks."

"What difference would that …" Lindsey gets it. Finally. "Oh, fucking GROSS." She looks down at the piece of paper in her hand with 'Todd, 218-5555' scrawled across it and crumples it up, throwing it at a random group of guys in disgust. They don't even notice

"Yup," the girl nods. "Fucked up, huh? Functionally school-sanctioned sexual predators." She puts her right hand out as her cigarette rests in her mouth. "I'm Alicia."

"Lindsey."

*

It's Alicia who changes everything for Lindsey. It's Alicia who convinces her to go along to Lady Luck Tattoo while Alicia has Angel tattoo her collarbone.

"What doesn't kill you …" Lindsey says as she runs her fingers along the scabbed tattoo later.

She makes the appointment for her first tattoo the next day.

It's also Alicia who starts leaving notes for "Lyn-z" on her dorm room door (and who leaves notes for "Juile!" too, which always makes Lyn-z snicker). Lyn-z likes it, likes that it marks the woman she might manage to become as different from the girl she was. She even starts handing in papers that way. Professors don't say anything – she figures they've seen the fluid identities of thousands of students pass by at this point.

It's Alicia who hands Lyn-z her first joint, who talks about her bands and her ex-girlfriends and her ex-boyfriends with the same nonchalance, who takes her to the school's stupidly-named Gay/Straight Alliance (HERO? Helping Educate Regarding Orientation? What kind of shit is that?). It's Alicia who kisses her quickly on the lips while running out the door and who mentions that Dr. Rineheart's "Sex, Gender, and Society" is pretty awesome for a diversity credit.

Lyn-z walks into the class the first day figuring that she'd be the only freshman (she is), that the class will be hard as hell (it is), and that it will be a class full of women (it isn't).

Sure, the class is mostly women, which is unusual for Gonzaga, but there are five guys in the class. Three of them are sitting in the back row, half-dozing in their seats with baseball hats turned around on their heads (Lyn-z finds out later that they're Econ majors who need the social sciences credit and thought Women's Studies would be a skate. They don't make it three weeks). The other two guys are sitting in the second row on the far side of the room, pulling notebooks out of their bags and laughing with each other. They both look pointedly at the dudes in the last row and snicker a little.

Raising an eyebrow, Lyn-z sits down in the row behind them. At least they're snickering at the sleeping dudes. And they look relaxed. Must be nice to be so comfortable here.

The guys also look like … well, they don't look like the walking Abercrombie and Fitch ad that Lyn-z has come to expect from most GU students. The smaller one is wearing a button up shirt, but the sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, exposing a wrist tattoo on the left arm and what looks like the beginnings of a full sleeve on his right. His hair is choppy, with a long strip that hangs in his eyes. He's really only kind of cute, until he smiles at the other guy. "… You have to meet him! Bob, you have to, he's amazing."

Oh. Woah. That _smile_. That could cut glass.

The guy he's talking to, Bob apparently, is tall and broad-shouldered and big and blonde. He looks like he could be a football player, but Lyn-z knows that they haven't had a football team since World War II. He actually looks kind of scary at first, but he reaches over and ruffles the hair of the smaller guy with a grin. "Okay, Frankie. I'll do it."

Frankie flashes another smile and catches Lyn-z looking out of the corner of his eye.

"Hey!" he says, turning around in his seat to look fully at her. "Joining us over in the Feminazi Corner?"

Lyn-z's hackles go up. Fuck that shit. She doesn't know a lot about feminism, but she's been reading a couple of books that she picked up in the library because they looked cool (and, okay, she doesn't want to look like an idiot in Women's Studies). She may not know a lot, but her family is Jewish and she's liking these books and she knows that she's not fucking down with that "feminazi" stuff. Her eyes narrow.

Frankie must notice, because he puts his hands in front of his body in surrender. "No, no! Dude, I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that!"

"Exactly how else could you mean it?" she asks, her voice cold.

"Sorry. He forgets that not everybody in the world knows him already," Bob says with a grin. He sounds … fond? "I'm Bob. He's Frank. We're in the Women's Studies program."

Lyn-z raises an eyebrow, not fully convinced.

"Yeah," Frank breaks in, obviously trying to make up for a bad first impression. "It's like a little bit of an in-joke because there's so much hostility to the program in the school and the teachers are all embattled and people totally call us 'feminazis.'" Frank stops, presumably to take a breath, but also clearly to consider his words. "Well, they don't call me and Bob feminazis so much. Mostly, they call us fags."

Lyn-z can't help it. She laughs a little.

Frank grins like he's won a prize. "Sorry. I can be awesome at bad first impressions. So, you're new, right? Haven't seen you before."

"Yeah." She blushes a little. She hates being a freshman. "First-year. A friend suggested the class."

"A first-year? Really?" Bob looks down at her bag as she shoves [Feminist Theory from Margin to Center](http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780896082212-27) and [Heartbreak: The Political Memior of a Militant Feminist](http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9780465017546-1) back into her bag and puts a notebook on her desk. He raises an eyebrow. "For a class?"

"No," she says, staring defiantly.

He darts a quick look at Frank, something she can't decipher.

"I think your friend gives good advice." Frank smiles a little softer.

A small woman who kind of looks the way Lyn-z imagines nuns look walks into the room, with a long dress, comfortable shoes, and short unstyled brown hair. "Hi, everyone." She smiles as she puts her bag down on the desk at the front of the room. "I'm Jane Rinehart."

"Hey, Jane!" a few voices say, Frank and Bob's among them. _Really?_ Lyn-z thinks. _All of the other professors have insisted on Dr. Whatever._

"Frank!" Jane says, her smile widening. "Back to terrorize me with postmodernism again?"

"Always!" Frank grins and shoves his backpack under his desk.

"You've taken this class before?" Lyn-z asks, looking at Frank, confused.

"Nah, I skipped this and went directly to Jane's Feminist Theory class," he says. "Me and Bob both need this to fulfill our graduation requirements for Women's Studies. Figured we'd come back and take it before we did too much that was specialized."

"So," she says, casually. "You like it?"

Frank looks at her, his face weirdly serious. "There is no better department in this school. You lucked out, too. Jane's the best of the best."

"All right, everyone," Dr. … Jane is saying. "Circle the desks up!"

Circle the what up?

Bob catches the look on her face and laughs. "Feminist pedagogy – teaching theory – thing. We move our desks into a circle to equalize power structures, to make sure that everyone is talking to everyone else and not just to Jane."

"Seriously?" she asks.

"Totally." He grins. "C'mon, grab your desk."

*

Bob is right. Lyn-z loves the class, loves Jane, loves that when people ask a question, they're asking it like they really want to know the answer. She's never done this before, never talked about gender and sex and sexuality in public, never heard of shit like "postmodernism" and definitely never heard people her age talking about "intersections of oppressions."

It's all totally new, but it's awesome.

Toward the end of class, as they're straightening the desks back into rows, Lyn-z finds herself talking to Bob again.

"Doesn't that bother you?" she asks as Frank jogs up to talk to Jane. She doesn't mean to be abrupt, but something he said has been pricking at the back of her head and he seems nice enough. He probably won't freak out. Probably.

"What?" Bob asks, understandably confused. They'd been talking about bell hooks.

"The fag thing?"

"Why should it?" Bob shrugs, his face impassive. "It's not like it's not true."

Lyn-z blinks. "Oh."

*

Lyn-z has never had a lot of friends. She had boyfriends and a handful of girls who she mostly hung out with because they were dating guys who hung out together. But she's never really had a crowd of people to watch _Buffy_ with or to argue about politics with or to round up to go to David's Pizza for a slice of their da vinci pizza or to share a stromboli.

She didn't know she was missing it, but now she can't imagine not having it. It's only been a few weeks since the semester started, she's just barely met Frank and Bob and she's really only known Alicia for a few months. But no matter how much she misses Steve sometimes (and she does, sort of), she wouldn't give this up for anything.

"He's totally going to eat your food," Bob's voice breaks her out of her … whatever it was she was just doing there.

"What?"

Looking at the table, she sees a flash of newly-tattooed knuckle pull back from her plate. She stares at Frank for a second and then starts laughing.

"Are you fucking serious? You were going to steal my food?"

Frank shrugs, his face unrepentant. "You weren't eating it."

"Well, not at that exact moment, no." Alicia rolls her eyes. She had seemed a little restrained when she first met up with Lyn-z at the coffeeshop in the student center and Bob and Frank were trailing behind. She's chilled since then, seems to like both of them a little more. Lyn-z could hope that Alicia recognized how awesome they are, but she actually suspects that it's the new boyfriend that's calming Alicia down.

Apparently, Alicia's a little friendlier when she's having orgasms with another person. And this Mikey guy is reportedly very good.

Bob is smirking at Alicia, which is a good look for him. The dude he brought with him, Ray, seems to agree. He's barely stopped staring at Bob since he sat down.

Ray is apparently Frank's "you gotta meet him" guy. Lyn-z approves. Anyone who looks at Bob like he could be the best thing to happen in life is a guy that Lyn-z can get behind. Or let Bob get behind. Whatever, she likes him.

Of course, Bob hasn't noticed yet. So it could be a while before anyone is getting behind Ray.

"Hey," Alicia's voice shifts barely-perceptively, but Lyn-z turns her head around to see who Alicia is calling out to. A tall, thin guy with mousey, messy hair and glasses is standing at the counter, taking a cap for his soda. "Mikeyway!"

Lyn-z grins a little. Awesome. She hasn't had an opportunity to meet this Mikey guy yet. And now he can run the gauntlet.

Mikey waves a little. Lyn-z examines him closer and can kind of see what the draw would be. Sort of. He has sharp angles and his hair is insane, but the grin he directs at Alicia lights up his face.

He walks over to their table, a shorter dude with even messier hair trailing behind him.

"Alicia," Mikey says. "What's up?"

"Join us?" she asks as people scoot around until a space is cleared next to Alicia and at the other end of the table, near Lyn-z. Mikey sits down and the guy with him hovers a little near Lyn-z, his face unsure.

"This is Mikey," Alicia says. "Mikey–Frank, Bob, Ray, and Lyn-z."

"And that's Gerard." Mikey waves a hand in the direction of the guy who still hasn't taken a seat. Gerard looks through the hair hanging in his face, smiling a small smile.

The smile, the hazel eyes, the nervousness …

Lyn-z grabs Gerard's hand, pulling him down into the seat. "Gerard. Sit."

His eyes widen perceptively, but he listens, settling into the booth next to Lyn-z.

*

They don't kiss forever. For, like, weeks. It's getting to the edge of ridiculous. Lyn-z knows from that first awkward lunch that she wants to make out with this guy and, after something Bob said got Gerard going on political statements in installation art, she also knew that she wanted to hear him talk.

So they hang out a lot, Alicia and Mikey playing at being fucked-up yentas and dragging both Lyn-z and Gerard along to the movies, to hear Alicia's band play at the new Sonic Burrito, and to coffee instead of out for beers ("I don't drink anymore," he says simply, his voice firm).

They hang out a lot but either Gerard is more clueless than Bob or he's not interested. And fuck, even Bob finally noticed the whole Ray thing. Eventually. Maybe after Lyn-z told him about it explicitly and had to use visual aids, but still.

Lyn-z is about done with the waiting.

They're sharing a pesto melt and fries at the greasy-spoon diner downtown that Ray's roommate loves. It reminds Lyn-z of home, of Jersey and dirty days and hazy nights. It's awesome.

"… ridiculous not to recognize graphic novels as an art form!" Gerard has been ranting for a little while about one of the art professors who refuses to acknowledge Stan Lee as a foundational art figure of the 20th century. Lyn-z agrees with him and everything, but she's also heard this speech a handful of times and has settled for looking attentive and quietly daydreaming about making out with someone.

Sure, it would be great if that someone was Gerard, but at this point, Lyn-z is open to suggestions.

Gerard is looking at her expectantly, which means she's been daydreaming too hard and not listening enough, so she's missed what she's supposed to respond to. She considers faking it, but she can't be bothered and, really, Gerard probably wouldn't buy it anyway.

"Sorry, I was spacing," she says, smiling a little ruefully and pushing the remaining fries across the booth to Gerard.

"Shit, I'm sorry. This has to be so boring for you …" Gerard's apologetic babble is just-barely- different than his interested babble, but the difference is there.

"No, it's not boring," she breaks in. "I'm just preoccupied. I'm sorry."

"What's up?" Gerard asks, his eyes wide and so fucking earnest and he's leaning across the booth so that she doesn't have to talk too loud if she doesn't want to.

"So, are you ever going to kiss me?" Lyn-z asks. Her mouth sometimes moves ahead of her head, but not usually like that. Fuck.

"Um." Gerard blinks, his usually-stupid-open face hard to read. "Did you want me to?"

God, he's as clueless as Bob.

Lyn-z shakes her head and laughs a little as she closes the space between them, leaning a little more than is strictly comfortable against the table. She grabs Gerard's hair – it looks greasy, but is surprisingly soft, which is good to know – and pulls his head closer. She looks him directly in the eye, so that there is no confusion.

"Yes. I want you to," she says. Then, she leans in just slightly closer. "But apparently, I'm going to have to do it."

It's a few minutes later, when they've been kissing in a booth in the middle of a diner, that it occurs to Lyn-z that this is maybe not the most romantic setting ever.

Whatever, she'll take Gerard up to the park and make out in the rose gardens later or something. He'd like that.

She bets that he's kind of a romantic.

*

**([Part 2](http://gonnafeelgood.livejournal.com/11935.html))**


	2. Chapter 2

Lyn-z has never been big on fate. She never had words for the itchy feeling that went down her back when people talked about things being "meant to be" until her required philosophy classes gave her a whole language to reject it with – words like "determinism" could be met not only with ideas of free will, but with logic syllogisms that pointed out the difference between necessary and sufficient causes.

It's awesome. The best thing about college (beyond Alicia and Bob and Frank and Mikey and Ray and Gerard, of course) is finding a whole vocabulary for all of the things that Lyn-z never knew how to say before.

So Lyn-z would never say that all of this was destined to be, not her life here, or Gerard, not even all of these insane people who are her friends.

But she can kind of understand for the first time why people might say shit like that.

*

Alicia swears that first kisses forecast the whole story of two people together. Like most of Alicia's theories, it's pulled totally out of her ass and appears to be completely true.

Gerard and Lyn-z are a lot like their first kiss – surprising, a little awkward, a little too public, and with Lyn-z always leading, even when she doesn't know where she's going.

Lyn-z totally likes Gerard. He's awkward and unsure of himself, like she's the first girl that's looked at him and seen something there. Actually, considering his evasiveness about previous relationships, that might be true. Sometimes, she'll be rambling about homework assignments or assholes who come into the café on campus when she's closing down, just wanting "one more latte" like she wouldn't have to totally re-clean the machine if she makes them and she'll just look over. Gerard will have this look on his face, something that looks a little bit like disbelief.

The first time she noticed it, she thought he was being an ass, making fun of her for talking so much. "What?" she snapped, grabbing her pen and shoving it into her bag. If Gerard was going to be a dick, she didn't have to stick around.

Gerard didn't look disbelieving anymore, he just looked confused. "What … are you leaving?" he'd asked.

And he sounded so genuinely confused that Lyn-z realized he wasn't making fun – he just kind of thought she was magic or something.

Which is kind of … awesome.

So it works, even though it maybe shouldn't. Lyn-z is really pretty inexperienced – her only real boyfriend before Gerard was Steve and she's kissed, like, four other people. The ridiculous thing is that she _still_ has more experience than Gerard does.

She doesn't find this out until the first time that they're making out and he gets her underwear off.

"Are you serious?" she says, propping herself up on her elbows, her astonishment momentarily erasing the fact that she was maybe about to get head for the first time in a _very_ long time. "You've never …"

Gerard blushes, tugging self-consciously at the shirt that he's still wearing. "I … didn't have a lot of chances to do this stuff in high school, you know?" he mumbles, staring at the floor.

"Hey," Lyn-z says, her voice a little softer in response to his obvious embarrassment. "No, I didn't mean it like that. You're just … Gee, you're gorgeous and smart and funny and you've been in college for two years. You've never … any of it?"

"No," he says a little defensively. "I've done stuff. Some stuff. Just … not this."

Lyn-z still kind of doesn't get it. Gerard isn't one of those guys, one of those 'I don't go down on girls, they go down on me' kind of guys so …

Oh god.

"Gee," she says carefully. "Have you had sex?"

"Yes!" he says loudly. "God, yes."

Lyn-z furrows her eyebrows a little. Then she remembers all of their shared Opinions about queerness and definitions of sex and sexuality and smiles a little.

"Okay, I appreciate that you've given people orgasms. But have you ever had anything other than your hand on someone else's genitals?"

"Um," Gerard's blush deepens, spreading down his neck. "No?"

Lyn-z's grin widens. He's so cute.

"That's fucking hot," she says, pulling him closer to her. "You're going to be awesome at this."

He is. He's attentive and careful and he really cares that she gets off. She looks down her body at his even-messier-than-normal hair and his big hazel eyes staring straight at her from between her legs and …

Yeah, he's good.

*

During her freshman year, Lyn-z had a bunch of bumper stickers she had gotten from the gay/straight alliance on her door, shit like "Heterosexuality is common, not normal" and "Hatred is not a family value."

So she guesses it's not that shocking that the fucking homophobes on her floor leave threatening notes on the whiteboard on her and Julie!'s door, usually misspelled and poorly-punctuated.

It sucks, some, but she doesn't feel that scared. She doesn't really understand why campus security pressures the housing department to let her move off-campus a year early, but it basically means that Lyn-z finally manages to get away from Julie! and moves into her very first apartment. Ever. By her_self_.

"This is why you have so many guys hanging around, huh?" Frank huffs as he carries another box of books up the second set of stairs into her little one-bedroom apartment. "So that when you need people to carry your eight million books, you've got us on hand?"

"Sexist much?" Alicia's voice breaks in as she turns a corner. She looks down pointedly at the two boxes of books in her arms.

Lyn-z laughs and shakes her head as she pushes her hair back from her face again.

She's been lucky so far – she'd found a moving day that all of her friends could help with and she had managed to sock away enough money that she actually has furniture, helped much with the addition of a couch that Gerard had found outside of someone's house near campus.

"I think this is it," Ray says as he walks in with one final box marked 'Random shit, IDK,' which was the last box of stuff that Lyn-z had thrown together in the dorm. She probably should have just thrown it out – if it didn't have a coherent label, according to Bob, it's probably just trash.

"Jesus," Gerard huffs as he flops down on the couch next to her. Lyn-z automatically lifts her arm to let him slump against her side, his face a little sweaty and his hair lank against her neck. "Are we done?"

"Whatever," Frank says from his perch on the floor. "You carried, like, three boxes and half a chair. You can't be that tired."

"Hey," Lyn-z breaks in, grinning. "He was _supervising_."

"Damn right," Gerard says smugly.

*

Things are awesome. Lyn-z loves her classes, loves her friends, even loves the little bit of extra cash she gets from her job at the coffee shop. In addition to all of that, Lyn-z lives in the best neighborhood in Spokane – she can walk downtown from her house, there's a grocery store two blocks away, and she can walk down some metal stairs in the side of a hill to the river that's five blocks from her apartment. Her neighborhood even comes with this awesome guy who just stands on the corner, waving and smiling at people and telling them to have a good day. Every day.

His name is Benny. She buys him hot chocolate at least once a week. He always smiles at her like it's the first time she's brought him something when he says "thank you."

In other words, things are going pretty well until Lyn-z walks into her first day of classes her sophomore year. She was supposed to have Contemporary Feminist Politics with Frank and Bob, but the stupid registrars fucked up her registration. She managed to find a political science class that was also crosslisted with Women's Studies, but in addition to it being a pain in the ass, it was also, unfortunately, Environmental Ethics.

It's not that she doesn't like Environmental Ethics – it's an interesting course, combining political science and philosophy and gender critique and it's team-taught by a philosopher and a real, honest-to-god _priest_.

So the class should be awesome, but it's also hard, and there aren't really any Women's Studies students in there. It's really just a couple of senior philosophy students looking to round out their classes before grad school applications and all of these asshole Poli Sci majors who are planning on being contracts lawyers and practical shit like that.

It kind of sucks, not liking any of them.

There's this one girl that Lyn-z thinks might be a possibility, at least at first. Jamia has a black Betty Paige cut and a constant smirk. She's also smart as hell – she's the first person to answer a question, the first to challenge both of the professors. Lyn-z thinks she _would_ like Jamia – she likes smart people in general – but she's so goddamn smug. She acts like if you don't know about queer jurisprudence, you're not worth her damn time. Lyn-z thinks she's an asshole. A hot asshole, but an asshole.

Plus, she wants to be a _lawyer_.

*

Maybe it's classes not being perfect that breaks the happy hazy glow around life, but things in general feel a little harder, a little rougher than they did the previous semester. Things aren't bad – Lyn-z has great friends and Gee is super-sweet and she loves her apartment and even likes her job – but she's starting to see the things she didn't catch in the first glow of love-with-her-life.

For example, Alicia is kind of a flake when she's falling for someone and will regularly fail to show up for coffee dates or meetups at the movies.

And that things with Gerard are good, not great. Gerard and Lyn-z try, they really do. They have awesome conversations and great sex and really really like each other. They laugh in corners of rooms at parties and they cuddle and watch zombie movie marathons on the couch.

Lyn-z likes him a lot, likes sex with him and his stupid bashful grin and the way he still kind of looks at her like she's a treasure that he doesn't know how he ended up with. But she's started to think that it's not as simple as liking him. Because she likes him, he likes her, they like each other.

They're just not really managing to fall in love.

*

"So you're saying …" Alicia trails off, sounding confused. "I don't get it."

It's one of the nights that Mikey and Gerard have their regular Dungeons and Dragons game with Ray (who was thrilled to find people to game with again). Alicia and Lyn-z claim the gaming nights as "girls' night in." Although some people (Mikey) might think of pillow fights and matching lingerie, they mostly sit around in sweatpants, listening to the Raincoats and eating pizza.

Lyn-z shrugs, flopping on her stomach and grabbing another piece of cheese pizza. "It's just … I don't know. There's a difference between good and great, you know?"

Alicia raises an eyebrow, her whole body radiating uncertainty. "Not really?"

"Yeah," Lyn-z sighs. "I know. You don't know."

*

It's easier than Lyn-z thought it would be. There's no drama, not really. She just sits down with Gerard on her bed, pulling him next to her and putting her head on his chest as she explains it all.

It's dumb and she uses all of the wrong words, shit like "love you but not in love with you," making her feel like some kind of character in a fucking romance novel, but Gerard gets it. He won't say it, he probably never will, but she thinks he's been thinking all of the same things, too.

And yeah, they both cry a little, but Lyn-z knows that she's doing the right thing when she keeps lying with her head on Gerard's chest, their hands entwined. She actually doesn't think much will change except that it's okay that she's not in love with him.

Things will be okay.

*

And things really are okay. Lyn-z thinks she should probably be devastated and there are definitely times where she turns to Gerard and goes to kiss him or something and then remembers _oh yeah, we don't do that anymore._

But the thing is, she still has a Gerard to turn to. They still watch monster movies together and he's still the first person she calls when a cup of coffee is the only thing stopping her from killing someone and he's still her favorite person.

She sees people, guys and girls that she eyes in class across the coffeeshop, and is vaguely interested but the interest is never strong enough for her to approach them. She's not really gun-shy, but she doesn't really want to deal with the implosion of another relationship, especially since it's very unlikely to go as well as the breakup with Gerard has gone. Sure, she misses getting head sometimes (because Gerard was really tremendously good at that), but it's really not much of a sacrifice.

What is a sacrifice, in contrast, is realizing that she really needs a study partner for Environmental Ethics. The class is interesting, still, but the material is hard and so far outside of Lyn-z's experience that she really needs someone to talk it out with. She loves her friends and every single one of them except Ray and Bob (Ray because he's a music major with, in his words, "no applicable skills" and Bob because he hates Political Science) are willing to talk it out with her. But what she needs, she knows, is someone who gets the Political Science part.

Unfortunately, as much as she hates to admit it, she needs the best Poli Sci student in the class.

Lyn-z needs Jamia.

*

She just bites the bullet one day and walks up to Jamia's desk as she's putting her books and notebooks into her backpack.

"Do you have any nights free this week?" Lyn-z blurts out. Oh nice. Very smooth.

Jamia's head snaps up, her brown eyes widening comically. "What?"

Lyn-z blushes and … what the fuck, blushes? She doesn't _blush._

"No," she says, shaking her head. "No, not like that. Look … we've got the test next week and I get the theory part, but I'm having trouble with the political implications part. I don't really … understand policy, I guess."

"Oh," Jamia's eyes narrow back to normal. Her face looks … something. Lyn-z can't read it, but it doesn't look like Jamia's about to laugh at her or anything, so Lyn-z stands her ground. "What makes you think I want a study partner?"

Lyn-z shrugs and taps her fingers on the edge of the desk. "I'm pretty good at the ecofeminist stuff and you kept asking questions about it today. Maybe talking it out would help?" She looks up hopefully. Jamia still strikes her as kind of … curt. But she doesn't seem mean, exactly, just too smart for her own fucking good.

"I …" And it's Jamia's turn to flush, just a little bit. Lyn-z bets she's not very used to being offered help. "You actually understand that?"

"Yeah, we're studying it in Feminist Theory, too. I kind of have double-duty on ecofem this semester."

"Huh," Jamia says. "All right. How about Thursday at six in the study lounge of the library?"

"Cool," Lyn-z smiles, bouncing a little on her feet.

*

It turns out that Jamia isn't really very mean at all. She actually brings Lyn-z a latte to their second study meeting and just shrugs when Lyn-z offers her money for it.

She's super-fucking-smart, that much of the first impression was definitely true, but she's not mean. She's just … focused.

"Lyn-z, come on," Jamia snaps, her voice a little rough with exhaustion. They've been studying for three hours. "Why hasn't the US signed onto Kyoto protocols?"

Lyn-z sighs. "Because the Clinton administration sold out the environment for hopes of Gore winning the 2000 elections?"

Jamia snickers a little. "Okay, yeah, arguably. But what was the reason they gave?"

"Some economic impact shit. Jesus, Jamia," Lyn-z lifts her head up from the table. "Seriously. If we don't have it now, we're not gonna get it. Please, God, let me stop."

"God, okay." Jamia makes a face, but she closes her books and stretches a little. "I'm kind of tired, anyway."

Lyn-z's eyes snag on the little strip of Jamia's belly bared by her stretch and …

Oh. Well. That's a little unexpected.

"I gotta go," Lyn-z says quickly, grabbing her stuff faster and shoving it into her bag.

God, how stupid could she _be?_ She's just barely managed to convince Jamia that she's not a total idiot and now she's …

She's gotta go.

"Okay," Jamia says, her voice sounding a little confused. "You don't want to stop and get some food on the way home?"

"Um," Lyn-z shakes her head, not meeting Jamia's eyes. "No, that's okay. I'm just gonna … I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," Jamia's voice is already fading as Lyn-z is at the door.

Shit.

*

It's a couple of months after Gerard and Lyn-z break up that she sees him walking in front of the library with Frank as she is closing up after her Wednesday night shift. He doesn't see her – he is totally engrossed in whatever it is that Frank is saying, his whole body leaning in and his attention honed.

Ah. So that's how it is.

She can't say that she's hurt or even surprised. It's not like she had ever thought that she and Gerard were forever.

Still, seeing Gerard and Frank makes something pull a little in her stomach, a something that she tries not to think about. It's not like she's jealous of Frank in particular, the thing with Gee was great but not going to go farther than it went. Really, she's just kind of envious in general, jealous that they've managed to figure something out that still hasn't gotten right.

She tosses the trash from the café into the dumpster and resolves to go and get nicely drunk.

*

"Booooooob," Lyn-z groans, setting her head very, very carefully down on the table in The Rocket Bakery. She has very little memory of the end of the night before, but she apparently called Bob and made him promise that he'd make her eat the next day.

Carbs. Lots of stomach-settling carbs.

Bob's lips quirk a little, the silver of his new lip ring flashing a little in the light. He doesn't appear to be very sympathetic.

"I'm not very sympathetic," he says. "You did this to yourself, girl."

Lyn-z waves her hand crankily. Her friends suck. Suck.

"Hey, babe," Ray says softly, setting a bagel with lox and cream cheese and capers down in front of her. "I brought you food."

Her friends _rule_.

"Lyn-z?"

Oh Jesus. Awesome. It would be awesome if Lyn-z were so hung over that she could hallucinate Jamia's voice right now. A little out of the ordinary, sure, but awesome because it would mean that Jamia weren't standing there, witnessing Lyn-z's most horrifying morning in recent years.

Oh yeah, this is the way to seduce a girl.

"Hey, Jamia," Lyn-z croaks, lifting her head from the table and thanking god for the sunglasses she'd grabbed.

"Wow," Jamia says. "You … kind of look like hell, actually."

"Yeah, um," Lyn-z tries to think of anything to say, other than: "I'm so hung over, I think I might die."

Which, apparently, is what her mouth chooses to say anyway.

Jamia's lips quirk a little. "Hard night?"

Lyn-z groans.

"Hey," Ray says, breaking in like the God of Conversations Lyn-z Doesn't Want to Have. "I'm Ray. This is Bob. We're friends of Lyn-z's."

"Jamia," she says. "Me, too."

Wait.

Lyn-z lifts her head from the table.

They're _friends_? How did she miss that, exactly?

"Well, I'm gonna run," Jamia says. "Nice to meet both of you. Take care of that head, Lyn-z."

Lyn-z nods dumbly.

"See you tomorrow at the Elk, right?" Jamia asks as she moves toward the door. "We've got that test on Tuesday."

Lyn-z nods again. Jamia waves with a little smile and walks out.

"Woah," Ray says under his breath.

"What?" Lyn-z asks, turning her head slowly to look at Ray.

"Dude, I'm gay and even I know she's hot."

Bob snickers a little. "Well, I don't see it. But she definitely thinks Lyn-z is hot."

"What?" Lyn-z might squeak a little. Maybe. She plans on blaming it on the hangover. "What are you …? No! She's just … she's my study partner, Jesus."

Bob looks at her like she's stupid.

_Bob._ Looks at _Lyn-z_ like she's stupid.

"Yeah, because I always make plans for a Friday night to study for a test on Tuesday."

*

Lyn-z doesn't exactly have moves, is the thing. Like, she's pretty cute, she knows that. She's smart and she's funny and if you're into people like Lyn-z, you'll probably be into her. Thus, she's never really bothered to develop any moves.

Which explains why, the next night, after Jamia buys her a coffee and a tofu Rueben and they've been working for an hour, Lyn-z just blurts out: "Do you like me?"

"Yeah, I like you," Jamia blinks, looking up from her notes. "Wait. What?"

"Do you like me?" Lyn-z is more than a little horrified with herself, but she kind of doesn't have any other choice but to continue. "Because … I think you're really funny and smart and I love your hips and I was kind of wondering if you would want to do this again?"

Jamia raises a slow eyebrow.

"Lyn-z, we do this all the time."

"No," Lyn-z says, frustrated. "More dinner, less books."

"What? Wait," Jamia lifts the other eyebrow. "Did you say that you love my hips?"

"Um," Lyn-z fidgets with her napkin a little. "Yes?"

Jamia's eyes widen. "This is … a little sudden?"

"Shit," Lyn-z says quickly, shredding her napkin nervously and staring at the table. "I don't even know if you date girls, I just … I don't want things to be weird, but Bob said … and then …"

Jamia's hand comes down over Lyn-z's, stopping her paper-shredding. Lyn-z looks up, wincing.

Jamia doesn't look pissed. In fact, she's kind of … smiling.

"I said it was sudden. I didn't say 'no.'"

*

So Lyn-z has a type, maybe. People that kind of drive her nuts and are kind of out of it. She had to catch Jamia up to speed, but once she was there, she was _there_. And it works, like it did with Gee, but different, too.

The relationship is good. Jamia isn't jealous of Gee, and Gerard thinks that Jamia is awesome. Jamia likes Lyn-z's friends and likes having her own space and would never dream of stifling anyone.

Lyn-z is a little impulsive for Jamia and Jamia maybe needs to be compulsively on time and has a million plans, but they compliment each other well.

It's different from any relationship that Lyn-z has ever been in. They argue more than she's used to and they spend more time apart. They don't watch horror movies together, but they do fall in love. So that's different, too.

*

Gerard is a doofus. Lyn-z is so fucking glad that they managed to stay friends, that their breakup was way more about them not being right for each other in that way than anything else. Because, otherwise, she would miss the beauty that is Gerard and Frank owning matching airbrushed unicorn t-shirts.

Matching. Airbrushed. Unicorns.

It's fucking glorious.

Lyn-z actually kind of likes the shirts. "Jam, we should do that."

"Do what?" Jamia is distracted. She had just been complaining about the International Policy quiz she has the next day. Apparently, there's a ton of Econ on it, which Jamia just sucks at.

"Gee and Frankie!" Lyn-z's voice is maybe a little more insistent than she would have thought it would be. But … it's cute. They're, like, visibly marked for each other. Not tattooed – Gerard would never agree, even though she thinks that Frank may already be planning one – but marked, publicly. Something everyone can see. It's cool.

Jamia looks up from her books for the first time, narrowing her eyes as she looks across the study area in Crosby. Her eyes stop on Gerard and Frank, being ridiculous and cute. As usual. "Honey, we're already offensively visible queers. We already do that."

"No," Lyn-z pouts. "Not that."

Jamia looks again, closer. "Oh god, the unicorns? You know I love you right?"

Lyn-z beams. "Yup." She does. It's cool. Because, really, nobody knows much of anything with Jamia, but Lyn-z gets this in her, this assurance that Jamia's love is fierce and hers and it kicks ass.

Jamia puts down her book for emphasis. Apparently, this is important.

"Lyn-z, there is not enough love in the world to wear something that ugly."

*

Lyn-z threatens to pout forever and she totally intends to do so until Jamia shows up with some Peruvian cuff bracelets made out of wood with a totally cool hinge in them. She puts one on Jamia's left arm and one on her own right arm, clasping their fingers together tightly.

Lyn-z looks down at their entwined hands and the sheen of wood reflecting wood.

This is a mark, too. She gets it.

She smiles.

*

If this were one of those romantic comedies that Alicia loves but denies watching, Jamia and Lyn-z would have some kind of misunderstanding that pulls them apart, right before they're pulled back together at the last minute. If it were one of those art-house French films that Gerard is constantly forcing Frank and Lyn-z to watch, they would sail off together into the sunset in a boat that nobody is steering while looking into each other's eyes.

Also, there would probably be a mime.

But life isn't like that. They aren't forced apart by circumstances that are hilarious in hindsight or weird misunderstandings and Lyn-z is pretty sure that neither of them even knows a mime.

But they are happy sometimes and sad sometimes. They fight and they make up. She still has lunch with some conglomeration of Bob and Frank and Alicia and Mikey and Gerard and Ray. Couples break up and tests are passed and life moves on. _Her_ life moves on. It's not always perfect, but it's hers.

There aren't Happily Ever Afters, not for anyone. But there is happy. And that's something.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Le Tigre's "TGIF," thanks to [](http://secrethappiness.livejournal.com/profile)[**secrethappiness**](http://secrethappiness.livejournal.com/) and [](http://idyll.livejournal.com/profile)[**idyll**](http://idyll.livejournal.com/) for the betas. I fudged some ages (Lyn-z is actually older than Frank), but whatever, it's an AU.
> 
> Posted as a part of [](http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines/profile)[**14valentines**](http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines/). [[Day 3] Health](http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines/101631.html)


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